A coalition of local officials from across the country are calling on Congress to oppose proposed legislation that will allow an increase in the length and weight of large trucks traveling on commercial highways.
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“Longer and heavier trucks would cause significantly more damage to our transportation infrastructure, costing us billions of dollars that local government budgets simply cannot afford, compromising the very routes that American motorists use every day.”
It’s not the cargo trains that make the system worse, it’s the prioritization of cargo over passenger rail along with lack of investment. If they spent even half the money on rail that they do on automobile roads we’d have one hell of a good rail system.
The highway system costs 200-400 billion dollars a year split between state and federal government.
Meanwhile Amtrak gets about 1.5 billion dollars from the federal government.